


One of Mine

by iloveyoudie



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Admissions of Love, Blow Jobs, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Season/Series 06, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 05:38:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20615867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iloveyoudie/pseuds/iloveyoudie
Summary: It was a heady rush to feel like king of his own castle.





	One of Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime after S6 and Wicklesham and Morse having gotten his house. 
> 
> Warning for gratuitous lovey dovey shit.

Max shrugged out of his dressing gown and slid into bed. He tossed and turned into several positions as he fiddled with the bedding, straightening and pulling things until the sheets and duvet were tucked across his bare chest. Only then did he sigh in contentment, “Fresh linens are next to godliness.”

Morse smirked over his book but didn’t otherwise move. He had learned that Max took an absolute age to get himself ready for anything. Preparing for bed was no exception and by the time the doctor emerged from the washroom with a damp face and smelling fresh, Morse had already gotten deep into his reading. Max’s physical presence in the bed wasn’t going to stop him from continuing.

“I should enjoy it while I can, shall I? New house. New bed. New sheets. Everything spic and span before there are bottles everywhere and tossed about stray clothes?” Max wasn't quite settled yet. He kept shifting. He leaned on an elbow and fluffed his pillows a few times. He also gave the cover of Morse’s book a glance, lifted his brows, and pursed his lips before he went back to getting himself situated.

Morse still didn’t speak. He knew that as soon as he deigned to snap back, Max had won. This was all just a trap.

“Could use some wall art though-” Max _still_ hadn’t quite laid down. He was looking around at the bare, sage colored walls of the bedroom. He’d had some minor input on the color, mostly that Morse shouldn’t paint another of his many rooms in a shade of blue, but the paint fumes had just worn off enough for them to actually use the space. Besides basic furnishings, it was all very no frills, “-it’s very spartan in here. Maybe a throw rug? An armchair and some accent cushions?”

Morse continued to say nothing.

“A couple of hooks in the closet perhaps. How about a rack to set your single pair of decent shoes on-?”

“Are you done?” Morse exasperated softly. He closed his book and downturned the corner of a page to mark his place, “I’ll stop reading. Happy now?”

Max feigned innocence and pursed his lips, “No need to stop on account of me.”

“There’s no pleasing you, you know that?” Morse huffed half a laugh and set his book on the bedside table. He scooted further down into the bed and reached for Max under the sheets. It wasn’t always the worst thing to give in to the doctor’s agitating.

“He who has satisfied his thirst, turns his back on the well,” Max smirked. He removed his glasses, put them on the bedside table and flicked off his lamp as he did so. With the light on Morse’s side still lit, it wasn’t very dark, but the dim brought with it a much more intimate mood.

This comfortable stage of their relationship was new but they seemed well suited to it. Perhaps it was because of the friendship that preceded everything or each of their mutual awareness of one another - full knowledge of the sharp edges as well as the smooth. It may have just been that they had similar personalities, but none of the friendly affinity had disappeared when their feelings deepened and gave way to more than a casual relationship. The events at Wicklesham had shaken them both and pushed the pair from affection and fumbling interest into something much more serious. Thankfully the fear and paranoia following had worn off, the clinging that they had both needed afterward, the desire for safety, but through it Morse had discovered a greater need for stability in his life. Max thought that maybe he was trying to prove himself to the world, to the people he’d drifted away from, and to himself, that he wasn’t as hopeless as everyone thought. Morse’s days of running away were behind him. He wanted to leave some sort of mark on the world should he meet an untimely end, not just a life encapsulated by a travel case and a record player.

The purchase of a house had been a big but necessary step. Unfortunately, it revealed Morse to be lacking in almost all things domestic. He wasn’t much of a handyman to speak of and took no strong stance on anything visual inside of his home besides his need for bookcases, a spot for his records and player, and his fondness for the color blue. Most of his friends had been recruited in bringing the place up to a livable standard but Max was the one he had consulted when it came to basic interior design. By the time all was said and done, Morse had a minimally furnished yet fully operational home.

Now, settled into a brand new bed, in a freshly cleaned and painted bedroom, Morse pulled Max into an embrace and slid his hands across his stomach and sides with great satisfaction. It was a combination of having Max here with him and having his own space. It was a heady rush to feel like king of his own castle. They pressed close, legs fitting together in well-learned angles, and Morse nestled a knee between the doctor’s soft thighs, “I know there aren’t garden scents drifting in on the breeze...”

“Yet,” Max supplied helpfully as he moved himself to accommodate the other man. He caressed along Morse’s waist as he put his arms around him. The detective wasn’t nearly as slim as he used to be, though he always looked thin in anything but a well cut suit. Max suspected that he got a bit softer around the middle by the day - or perhaps by the pint.

“-no garden _yet_,” They had talked about doing some plantings under the parlor windows for a bit of color. Morse’s voice had dropped in that painfully soft and earnest way of his, “but I hope you’re at least comfortable here.”

Max was hopeless for Morse when he got this way, when he pinned him with those eyes of his and emanated nothing more than his desire to please him and be with him. He had never met someone who could also be so grave about such menial things, nor anyone who seemed to enjoy his company as much, and it was irresistibly attractive. He could be swayed any way Morse wished when he looked at him like that, and worse was that Morse was absolutely clueless about what he could do to people just with a glance.

“What do you think? Do I seem comfortable?" Max slipped his hands down the back of Morse’s pyjama bottoms to grab his arse and pull him into a kiss. He was already half-aroused when their hips came together, he had been since Morse said something about ‘breaking in the new bed’ in a tease hours before while they had been driving. He should have had him right there in the car, pulled over on the roadside and ravaged him in the back seat like they were randy teens, or even taken his chances with shenanigans _in motus_ and a possible scandalous vehicular death, but Kemp was on at the hospital this week, and if Max was going to die in a freak sex-romp turned car crash, there were preferable choices of who would be stuck poking about at his entrails.

“_Good evening,_ doctor,” Morse chuckled against Max’s mouth when he felt the other’s arousal press into him. He parted his lips to deepen the kiss. Max tasted like toothpaste and smelled like fresh washing up and there was the faintest prickle of the day’s stubble which Morse found pleasing in a very particular way, but more than that was the flavor and musk that was unique to the man that he had no idea how to put into words. It was the sort of thing he nearly forgot when they were apart but with the smallest taste, he craved it like a drug. It was satisfying in a bone deep way, something that hit him at his core. Kissing Max was like coming home.

Morse rolled his hips in a small circle against the firm weight of the other man and it sent a crawling prickle of heat out to his extremities and across every inch of his skin. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up in anticipation and in response his cock jumped against Max’s hip.

“Good evening yourself, detective,” Max smiled coyly and traced Morse’s lips with his tongue when they broke even the slightest bit apart. He squeezed Morse’s arse again as they once more shifted their hips together. Max actually shivered as their growing arousals brushed with only the thin fabric of their bedclothes in the way. He exhaled breathily and ran their lips together feather light, “A very fine evening, I dare say.”

They kissed again, playful and eager, with nipping lips and adventurous tongues. Max continued the slow rock of their hips and within moments their arousal had flared into undeniable rigid need. Morse's hands greedily wandered over Max's body. He enjoyed his curves underlied with deceptive strength. He was solid where it mattered and soft and lovely everywhere else. Morse had learned very well that handling dead weight his whole life had honed a rather beneficial set of skills in the doctor, skills that were happy to oblige with a swift disrobing or tossing a very difficult detective around like a sack of potatoes. Said detective rather liked Max's manhandling.

Morse's fingers pulled lines over the doctor's bare torso, scratched lightly over his shoulders and caressed across his stomach. When Max rocked their hips a bit more firmly, Morse retaliated with fingers ghosted across his nipples. He plucked them delicately until Max squirmed and let out sounds of frustration. Only when they both hit their highest tolerance of restraint, their skin sparking under every touch, did they pause for a momentary rest to let their bodies hum.

"You're amazing," Morse breathed. The fabric of his pyjama bottoms clung uncomfortably, already damp on his sensitive skin and snug enough to send an uncontrollable shiver through him each time Max gripped his hips and moved. Their foreheads pressed together and he sighed, “I love you."

Max laughed lightly, warm, not mocking. Such an admission was not a first from Morse but it bloomed a lovely feeling through him just the same. Morse was generous with his affections when they were alone and even more so when they were in bed. He was almost a different person behind closed doors, unmasked, stripped away from the bluster and guise that he wore to get through his days. He was sensitive and sensual as much as he was edgy and sharp. Morse was loving to a fault and Max had been no match for it. His defenses had crumbled under that unwavering focus when it had been aimed at him. Once he’d stopped fighting the magnetic pull they had towards one another, he fell for Morse hook line and sinker. He was still falling. A little more every day.

"I love you too, my dear, but I could love you much easier with less clothing between us," He slid his hands back up to Morse’s waistband and snapped it lightly.

Morse grinned and it seared Max with another flash of heat. Warmth. Love. Undeniable attraction and very immediate desire. His insides did somersaults. He knew it was mutual because Morse wore his heart on his sleeve and likely didn’t know any other way to be.

They disentangled in the way that people did when they were secure with one another and had nothing to prove. There was no need to disrobe in a slow and showy way or to tear their clothes off like rabid beasts. There was no need for a demonstration. The goal was to be naked and pressed back together as soon as possible and the easiest way to do that was just getting it over with. Max had always been conscious of his body, even with appreciative encouragement, so he wriggled out of his bottoms under the sheets and cast them out onto the floor. Morse didn’t have any of those qualms. When Max turned back towards him he found Morse had flipped the covers off of himself completely to pull his socks off first (Max laughed) before he arched his hips off the bed to peel his pyjamas away. Max took a moment to appreciate the arch of Morse’s lean body above the bed, the fabric sliding over of his hip bones, the band catching just slightly on the curve of his cock and making it bounce against his belly amongst a hatch of ginger curls. When Morse leaned to discard his clothing over the bedside, Max was treated to the blush and freckle of his arse, all of him pale and unmarred except for the round old scar on his thigh that he knew too well.

Max couldn’t help reach for it. He smoothed his fingers across the old gunshot wound, and when Morse looked back at him with wide eyes, he blinked and said, “One of yours.”

"Oh, its mine now?" Max slid closer and Morse reached for him, but the doctor shifted on top and pushed the other man back to remain in his half-propped up recline. He lowered himself to press his lips to the scar and run his hands slowly up Morse’s thigh.

As Morse settled onto his back, he fought the urge to lift his hips for more when Max’s fingers journeyed slowly up the inside of his leg. They were light and teasing and didn’t touch as far or fully as he would have liked. He wanted to writhe, to twist himself for something more immediately satisfying, but instead ran his hands across Max’s back and shoulders, "Well, you were the first on the scene."

Max pressed another kiss to Morse’s hip, to the delicious dip of his pelvic bone, brushed his face across the the soft hair below his navel, but still staunchly avoided his cock even as it beaded with eager moisture. He could hear Morse’s breath hitch, could feel his hips frozen in tense restraint, but it didn’t change his path at all. Max kissed across the soft round of Morse’s belly, his fingertips explored the fine bones just under the skin, and traced his way from one scar to another. This time he brushed a thumb across the pink-white line below Morse’s ribs where a knife had slashed and not stabbed in the very beginnings of their acquaintance, “Is this mine too?”

“Yes,” Morse breathed.

Max kissed there as well, and across his ribs, and then the soft dip of his abdomen as it bobbed with the other’s breathing. Even after his lips left the old scar he continued to touch it, like a laying on of hands, healing with will alone. But Morse’s wounds were long ago closed and the scars were a map of his past. Max was a part of many of them.

_...had it been just a different twist of the knife..._

Max dissolved the memory with a dance of his fingers across Morse’s side that caused a quick and surprising laugh from the other man.

Yes, Morse was ticklish. It was one of those tidbits of information that was reserved for only the most intimate. Morse, in the same vein, had discovered that Max had his own little weak spots, but they were not as easily accessible. He also learned that the doctor’s button pushing wasn’t always verbal. He was very tactile, handsy, and left to his own devices had discovered all sorts of reactions that he could pull from Morse’s body.

After a laugh and squirm, Morse pulled him up until the doctor's knees bracketed his hips in a straddle. He held his face between his hands and kissed him. Their bodies pressed together, skin on skin, cocks pinned tight between their torsos and shifting against their own heated flesh. Max broke the kiss and rolled his hips downward, and as they both sighed from the slow burn of pleasure, he met Morse’s eyes with his own. He touched his cheek, brushed a thumb over one of those astonishing cheekbones, and down until he was tracing an old scar on his chin. It was barely noticeable until Morse smiled or his face twisted into one of his many expressions of disgust.

“Not one of mine,” Max breathed. Their hips still moved. At times like these he had to admit a certain pleasure was had to be able to provide lovely friction with only his weight. He could feel Morse pressing up into him harder, trying to move and flex his body in a search for more contact, but he was pinned hip to hip and belly to belly and restrained by Max’s controlling mass.

“No,” Morse’s eyes closed and his shoulders trembled a moment. His hands slid along Max’s thighs until he could grip his arse.

“May I ask?” Max kissed the corner of his mouth and Morse tilted his face towards it.

“You’ll laugh,” he smiled, “I tripped into a door.”

Max cracked a puzzled little smile and their bodies paused in their movement for a moment, “What?”

“I know,” Morse’s eyes opened again, “The oldest excuse in the book, as they say. But true. Untied shoelaces. I tumbled over my own feet and cracked my chin on a marble threshold.”

“_On brazen steps the marble threshold rose..._” Max chuckled.

Morse did too and when he smiled the scar showed itself again and Max tilted his chin to press another kiss to it.

Their lips met once more, this time slower and with smiles curled across their mouths as the roll of their hips resumed. Each and every movement demanded _more _and _faster_ from their bodies but neither man was willing. There was something uniting in the tension, in the feel of them gripping each other’s limbs in their eager frustration, of pulling out their pleasure as long as they possibly could. The prickle of perspiration, of them sticking where their bodies tangled up, salty skin to be tasted and explored, barely present huffs of breath, inhales, moans muffled into mouths.

They had the time. They had the space. All of this was theirs.

A string of slow, hungry kisses was broken with mirrored groans and Morse’s arms looped around Max’s neck to hold him tighter and closer. They rocked and rutted, never faster, never slower, and soon it was like nothing in the world existed except the pair of them and where their bodies met. Morse tilted Max’s face to pepper desperate fleeting kisses across the man’s cheek and then pressed one to his temple, to his hair, and the corner of his eyebrow. A faint pink line broke the edge of the brow and a spray of tiny white scars joined to his hairline. The scars of Wicklesham were still healing and Morse would always feel responsible. He murmured gently against the skin, breathy, “These are mine.”

The words burned through Max in an entirely different way. It was very near embarrassment, a rush of heat that had him flushing all over. It was rare that anyone could rob Max Debryn of words, but Morse had done it. He swallowed past a lump in his throat and turned his face into Morse’s neck to murmur, "If you say so, love."

“I do,” Morse guided his face up once more to press a kiss to his jaw. He didn’t want him to hide. He wanted Max to know he meant every word. That no matter what happened between them, these things, these lasting marks, bound them together forever.

“Rather you claimed other bits of me, you know,” Max smirked and veered the conversation away. He didn’t want to think of sand quarries or angry masons and their thugs. He especially didn’t want to think about it now with his entire body crying out for satisfaction.

Thankfully, Morse had sense enough to realize.

“Getting to that,” Morse chuckled. He sat up a bit more, and with his arms around the doctor, rolled Max onto his back. He was already comfortably snug between the man’s legs and used the position to take his turn asserting a bit of control. Max gave in to him easily and spread his thighs to accommodate Morse’s new position and Morse, propping himself on one hand, reached between them to wrap his hand around both of their cocks and give them a teasing tug. Max’s hips rose for more as he groaned but Morse, just as quickly, had released them again.

He kissed down Max’s chest, flattened his body and writhed across him. He plucked sensitive nipples between his lips and lathed his tongue across them before moving on. Every bit of flesh was paid attention, stomach nipped and kissed, hip groove left with a red suckled mark, thighs nibbled along, until Morse had Max’s knees over his shoulders and he could finally grasped him in hand and give him a slow lascivious lick from bollocks to tip.

Max cursed. Morse grinned and closed his lips over the swollen crown of him.

Cursing, Morse had learned, was another of those intimate little secrets. The good doctor seemed to lose a significant bit of control over his vocabulary when in the throes of passion.

Morse enjoyed pleasing the other man. He enjoyed immensely having him let loose. He liked to see that cool and distant facade shake away with every touch. Each sound, each tug of hair, each grip of Max’s hands into his shoulders or into the bedding let him know he was doing his job properly. He took him slowly at first, trying to match the grueling pace they had started with, but it wasn’t long before Max’s hands sunk into his hair and urged him for more. Morse tortured him with a swirl of his tongue and the slide of his lips, he gripped him tight and followed everything with the firm movement of his hand. He swallowed him deep every couple of strokes, pressed close to inhale his heady scent, to be nearly against his body, to apply the sort of suction that made Max’s breath stutter from his lungs. Morse loved being fully surrounded by Max’s body as much as he did having him at his mercy. He managed a glance up, they met eyes, and Morse hummed with a bit of naughty satisfaction as he withdrew slow enough to make the other man writhe. He knew how he looked now, knew what it did to Max, and sure enough as his lips slid off of the man with a moist pop, Max muttered something about him being ‘_bloody perfect_’ and dropped his head back with a sort of strained exhale.

Morse could feel when the doctor was reaching his limit. He felt his thighs tighten, his legs tremble around his shoulders and hips lock up with restraint. Morse heard Max’s breathing freeze in his chest when he bobbed on him again and chased his mouth with a firm circular grip.

“_Morse_,” Max’s hand in his hair tightened in frustrated pulses as Morse withdrew just to the head and swirled his tongue over the swollen tip. He was close, very close, and Morse knew it. All it took was suction, pulling him in one last time, hollowing his cheeks to hold him in place, and Max cursed out his orgasm. His back arched, the world disappeared, and all he could do was surrender to that mouth and the way Morse kept him pinned underneath him. The tension died down in waves, in twitches and shudders, and Morse only released Max when the doctor’s body sunk back into the bedding and his breath came in deep needy inhales.

Morse kissed his spent body before wiping his face on the sheets - so much for being spic and span - but he wasn’t quite finished. He was frustrated. Aroused and needy himself. His hips had been rocking into the bed as he pleasured the other man, his own cock rutting into the blankets impatiently. Max had watched him, he’d felt his hot glance scrape across his back as Morse’s hips rolled in frustration, and it wasn’t the first time. He’d caught him once, in the dawn of their relationship, when Morse woke up half-cocked and Max still slept. Morse had pleasured himself in fear of waking him. He’d thrust into his fist, into the tight pull of a sheet, whispered moans of Max’s name into his pillow and bit back his orgasm until his lip bled.

He hadn’t been as silent as he’d hoped. Max had watched him then too, let him perform for him, let him fuck his fist in a secret show, as his tense nervousness and worry at being caught heightened every sensation. Morse had discovered that he rather liked Max watching him. He also learned another of those intimate little secrets. About what a split lip could do to a doctor who had a bit of a thing for blood.

Max groped for him now, reached down with a trembling hand to bring Morse back up against him as he recovered. The doctor was boneless and sated but Morse was still a wound spring. His cock pressed like a hot brand into the doctor’s oversensitized body and as they met in a kiss, Max moaned gently to taste himself on the other man’s lips. When they broke apart he whispered reverently, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Morse replied with a smile, but it was his turn to be coy as one of his hands once more slipped between them.

Max was in no state to deny him anything, not that he would, so he parted his legs when Morse’s fingers searched between them and he closed his eyes when those clever digits teased across his entrance.

“But I could love you much more effectively with less space between us.”

“Cheeky,” Max barked a small laugh but it dissolved into a grunt of pleasure and another shudder as Morse pressed a finger inside and opened him up. He was gentle, familiar with his body, knowing exactly how to push and pull until Max was once more gripped into the bedding and curling his toes. There was no moment of rest for the doctor and he was half-hard again by the time another couple of fingers joined the first. As Morse’s probing digits brushed inside of him just right Max made a very undignified sound and his body released again, another small spurt against his belly that he had no control over.

Morse kissed him again before he finally pulled away to prepare and Max was granted a few moments to rest, to catch his breath, and readjust his hips. He cracked his eyes in the dim bedroom lighting to watch Morse stroke himself and slip on protection. He was beautiful even while performing the drudgeries of intimacy. His body was blushed, his hairline damp with perspiration, and the lamplight hit his eyes in the most astonishing ways.

“I love you,” Max murmured, besotted, and almost surprised at himself that it had come to his lips so swiftly. As Morse settled back between his thighs, as his cock lined up and pressed into him, slow and with a twinge of the usual discomfort, Max gasped against his lips, and couldn’t help himself once more, “I love you.” And when Morse pushed deep inside, the discomfort given way to that feeling of being filled, he groaned and braced a hand against the headboard. This time it was a bone deep expression of satisfaction, “_I love you_.”

Morse flushed red, both from the firey burn through his body and the adamant affirmations. His head dropped into the crook of Max’s neck, pressed a kiss there along with a frustrated nipping bite, and then gave a small wondering laugh, “I love you too.”

It was only then that he started to move. Morse wanted to drag this out, to once more have Max writhing under him so far gone that he couldn’t form intelligent sentences, but he found his body wanted it’s own satisfaction more. The first few thrusts were a valiant attempt at slow and steady, withdrawing nearly all the way before he pressed back in, but it only lasted a few moments before he clamped his hands on Max’s hips and pulled them together with some measure of force. There was no more cursing then, no more words at all, just the sounds of their bodies coming together, of their ragged breathing, and the sound of the repeated low thud of the headboard against the wall.

Morse trembled as he got close, grunted with his efforts to hold himself together, but Max reached for him, curled a hand around his neck and pulled him eye to eye again. Another kiss, a dirty moan into his mouth, and another little affection was all it took, “Go on, love.”

Morse shivered to pieces as he came, dispersed into a million particles, exploded incomprehensibly, his consciousness exiting his body with the first blank white of ecstasy and abandoning him to the pleasure that tore through him. Things with Max were never simple rolls in the hay, nothing quick and dirty in an alley, even in the beginning it hadn’t been simple or shallow. Every single interaction insinuated itself deeply inside of him, and the sex was as mind blowing now as it had been the first time.

Awareness came back bit by bit, like a magnet pulling things back together, but not necessarily in the right order. He became aware of being collapsed on top of Max, of there being no delineation between the buzzing of his body and the other man’s. He realized that one free hand had tangled with Max’s in his release and he still clutched it, white knuckled, so he eased his fingers up, flexing out one by one, but didn’t quite let go. He mouthed kisses against the sweaty skin by his face and tested each tingling inch of him until he was cognizant enough to roll away, flop on his back, and let the air prick cool over his sensitive body.

Their hands found each other again and their pinkies hooked, lifelines, until both of them got a handle on themselves.

Morse had a tendency to get introspective after sex, when his overactive mind spun out of his body in pieces and collected back in a jumbled mess. Bits of everything fitted awkwardly together, about love and the state of his life, about bodily pleasures vying with mental and emotional satisfaction. About scars and the past. About his new house and every paltry anxiety inducing reality of being a homeowner. But every bit of information flew through his mind too quickly for him to grasp. It likely seemed odd to others, but it was reassuring to him: if his mind was so thoroughly scrambled then the sex had to be phenomenal.

He nearly jumped when he felt Max moving next to him, so deep he was in his own thoughts, but when he finally cracked his eyes and glanced over, Max was fishing his pyjamas from the floor and cleaning himself off with them. The doctor glanced at him and gave a sheepish sort of smile to be so unrefined, “You’ve wasted me for getting up. So much for clean bedding.”

Morse could only smile small.

After another few minutes they were both loosely wiped off and had abandoned bedclothes completely in lieu of just tucking in together, skin still electric with the memory of their intimacy. Morse’s lamp was finally flicked off and when he settled back in, he set his head against Max’s shoulder in the dark. He could feel the doctor tracing up his spine, fingers walking slow along his vertebrae and then smoothing back down to his tailbone, and each caress brought him that much closer to unconsciousness.

“Do you think about it much anymore?” Morse murmured in the dark, “Wicklesham.” And then again, “The past.”

“I try not to,” Max’s voice vibrated through his chest very close to Morse’s ear.

“Why not?” It sounded foolish but his intentions were pure.

“Because I’d like to be able to work in the evenings like I always have done and not worry that any heavy footstep in the hall isn’t coming to knock my lights out and truss me up. Because I’d like to think there isn’t some grand conspiracy to dissolve society from it’s center with black corruption-” Max shrugged, “-though I suppose that’s always happening somewhere.”

Morse’s eyes had closed, mostly from the steady tone of Max’s voice as he talked but he wasn’t all gone. Even as he replied his own voice began to sound distant, “Yet whatever has happened has made us who we are now. Brought us here.” He squeezed Max’s soft waist.

“Scars are wounds that have healed, Morse. They change our topography, not define ourselves,” He pressed lips to Morse’s forehead. “I can do without remembering that you could have died a dozen and a half times up until now. Instead I’ll appreciate that you survived.”

“Thanks to you,” Morse smiled against Max’s skin.

Max only hummed.

“You can take credit sometimes, you know.”

“Fine,” Max huffed a bit and shifted. This time he slid out from under Morse’s head and turned to face him. He tucked close again, legs once more fitting perfectly together, Morse’s knee between his thighs, an ankle curled around his calf, full waist pressed to a lean one, and knobby elbows tucked against Max’s soft sides.

“I’ll take credit for some good stitch work,” his hand brushed the old knife wound one more time, “and I’ll take credit for being the only doctor you’ll see.”

Morse chuckled.

“I’ll take credit for improving your wardrobe and decorating your house.”

Morse laughed a bit more.

Max’s lips pressed to the corner of his mouth, “I’ll even take credit for being poor enough in a fight that I let myself get kidnapped like a damsel.”

Morse found that less funny. He squeezed him.

“But I’d rather not take credit for anything at all,” Max said with a small yawn. It made him pause and he smothered it by dipping his head against his chest and his hair tickled Morse’s cheek, “Because I don’t much care what anyone deserves or gets credit for. I’m only concerned about what I have.. And keeping it.”

Morse got a shiver of emotion then, something that rippled up his spine and got stuck in his rib cage. Max had a way of taking his deep thoughts and turning them on him in ways he never saw coming. He would always think of his scars as old traumas, he wasn’t sure if he could ever get entirely past them. The danger that had passed had led him here, and he realized that only by connecting them to Max, by making them ‘his’ had he found his own ownership of them. They weren’t things to think of and dread, they were physical ways to connect to the man.

“You have me,” Morse said aloud before clarifying, “I’m yours.”

“And I intend to keep you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted something sexy and fluffy with a lot of 'I Love You' in it because I almost never have these two admit such things.  
I think I did that.... I totally lost all perspective on it by the time I deemed it finished.


End file.
